Is racial bias driving Trump’s neglect of Puerto Rico?

The morning after Hurricane Maria blasted through Puerto Rico, I emailed my aunt to ask if she was safe. That was Sept. 21. I heard back from her on Oct. 10. She was fine, she assured me, but “Puerto Rico is destroyed.” After that, my tia and I again lost contact; her email had come through during a brief moment of cell service.

Numerous commentators – including Ret. Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who ran the U.S. military’s 2005 Hurricane Katrina relief operation – have criticized the Trump administration’s Puerto Rico storm response. Others have contrasted it with the all-hands-on-deck support seen by Harvey and Irma victims in Texas and Florida.

Based on my experience researching equity and inclusion in U.S. policy, racial bias may explain these disparate relief efforts, at least in part. Environmental disasters lay bare existing inequalities like prejudice and poverty. So in a place like Puerto Rico, where nearly 99 percent of the population is Latino, discriminatory decision-making can hurt the community’s capacity to recover.

An unflattering comparison

In Texas and Florida, the president responded swiftly, visiting these southern states in a matter of days. In Puerto Rico, on the other hand, President Trump arrived to survey the wreckage two weeks after Maria struck.

Likewise, while the president vowed to stand with Texas and Florida “every single day” to help them “restore, recover and rebuild,” he seemed to mock Puerto Ricans’ plight at an Oct. 6 Hispanic Heritage Monthevent.

Most recently, Trump even threatened to withdraw federal aid from Puerto Rico altogether, even though some communities have yet to see a penny.

There is empirical evidence that skin color impacts federal assistance. A 2007 study performed by researchers at Stanford and UCLA found that Americans are less willing to support extensive taxpayer-funded disaster relief when the victim population is not white.

Signs of racial bias in the current federal relief efforts go beyond Puerto Rico. The U.S. Virgin Islands, where 98 percent of the population identifies as black or of African ancestry, were also battered by both Hurricanes Irma and Maria, leaving residents “in survival mode.” The Trump administration has also largely ignored their suffering.

Separate and unequal

One is political clout. These two U.S. territories were inevitably facing an uphill disaster recovery process because – unlike Texas and Florida – Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands don’t have representativesdefending their interests in Congress.

Partisanship is another likely factor. Facing historic disapproval ratings, President Trump’s agenda has also narrowed toward rallying his base. It’s predictable, then, that the president worked diligently to help Texas and Florida – states that supported him in 2016 – while neglecting Caribbean residents, who cannot vote in a presidential election.

But I would contend that the differential post-hurricane treatment transcends these political disadvantages and reflects racial bias.

More recently, in April 2014, residents of Flint, Michigan, a predominantly black community, began falling ill after the highly contaminated Flint River became their only water source. Community members raised concern about the foul-smelling water coming out of their faucets, and doctors alerted state and federal officials about elevated lead levels in the water.

In Michigan, it didn’t go without saying that ‘Flint Lives Matter.’AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Puerto Rico’s demographics diverge from that of the U.S. general population, where just 18 percent of people identify as Latino and 13 percent as black. President Trump’s behavior seems to reflects that racial difference, whether he knows it or not.

Lauren Lluveras is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at University of Texas at Austin.